After the Senate passed that $600 million Border Security Bill yesterday, President Obama issued a statement asserting that securing the southwest border has been "a top priority" since he took office.

But if you think Mr. Obama can have but a single "top priority," you'd be wrong. He's got a load of them.

In an Address to the Nation two months ago, Mr. Obama declared "our top priority is to recover and rebuild from a recession that has touched the lives of nearly every American."

More than any other issue, he has used the phrase "top priority" about digging the economy out of the recession and creating jobs. And on this issue, he drew a distinction between "a" top priority and "the" top priority.

"Creating jobs in the United States and ensuring a return to sustainable economic growth is the top priority for my Administration," he said in an Executive Order last March on his National Export Initiative.

Early in his administration, Mr. Obama also assigned the "top priority" label to his campaign promise to overhaul America's health care system. But a check of his speeches since taking office, reflect a bevy of other "top priorities:"

FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS: "...that's something that's going to be a top priority." (4/27/10)

ENERGY SECURITY: "And that's why my energy security plan has been one of the top priorities of my Administration since the day I took office." (4/28/10)

EDUCATION REFORM: "To train our workers for the jobs of tomorrow, we've made education reform a top priority in this Administration." (2/24/10)

STUDENT LOAN REFORM: "This is something that I've made a top priority." (2/1/10)

EXPORTS BY SMALL BUSINESSES: "This is going to be a top priority." (12/3/09)

HEALTH ASSISTANCE TO 9/11 FIRST RESPONDERS: "I'm not just talking the talk, we've been budgeting this as a top priority for this Administration." (2/3/10)

END HOMELESSNESS AMONG VETERANS: "I've also directed (Veterans Affairs) Secretary Shinseki to focus on a top priority: reducing homeless among veterans." (8/17/09)

HURRICANE PREPAREDNESS: "Our top priority is ensuring the public safety. That means appropriate sheltering in place or if necessary, getting as many people as possible out of harm's way prior to landfall." (5/29/09)

H1N1 FLU VACCINATIONS: "And throughout this process, my top priority has been the health and the safety of the American people." (5/1/09) ...

... "Everything is getting more expensive, I'm hardly earning any money, and then I'm supposed to pay more taxes to help save the country? How is that supposed to work?" asks Nikos Meletis, the shipbuilder. His friends, gathered in a small cafeteria on the pier in Perama, are gradually growing more vocal. They are all unemployed, desperate and angry at the politicians who got them into this mess. There is no sympathy here for any of the political parties and no longer any for the unions either.

"They only organize strikes to serve their own interests!" shouts one man, whose name is Panayiotis Peretridis. "The only thing that interests me anymore is my daily wage. A loaf of bread is my political party. I want to help my country -- give me work and I'll pay taxes! But our honor as first-class skilled workers, as heads of families, as Greeks, is being dragged through the dirt!"

"If you take away my family's bread, I'll take you down -- the government needs to know that," Meletis says. "And don't call us anarchists if that happens! We're heads of our families and we're desperate."

He predicts the situation will only become more heated. "Things are starting to simmer here," he says. "And at some point they're going to explode."

It seems a bit strange to me that the media carefully warn about and label any content that involves sex, violence or strong language — but there's no similar labelling system for, say, sloppy journalism and other questionable content.

I figured it was time to fix that, so I made some stickers. I've been putting them on copies of the free papers that I find on the London Underground. You might want to as well.

See the rest on Tom's site at the link above. You can download a U.S. version sized for Avery 5160 labels here.

AP Standards Center issues staff advisory on covering New York City mosque

Associated Press Deputy Managing Editor for Standards and Production Tom Kent sent the following note to the staff about covering the New York City mosque story:
Aug. 19, 2010

Colleagues,

Here is some guidance on covering the NYC mosque story, with assists from Chad Roedemeier in the NYC bureau and Terry Hunt in Washington:

1. We should continue to avoid the phrase “ground zero mosque” or “mosque at ground zero” on all platforms. (We’ve very rarely used this wording, except in slugs, though we sometimes see other news sources using the term.) The site of the proposed Islamic center and mosque is not at ground zero, but two blocks away in a busy commercial area. We should continue to say it’s “near” ground zero, or two blocks away.
WE WILL CHANGE OUR SLUG ON THIS STORY LATER TODAY from “BC-Ground Zero Mosque” to “BC-NYC Mosque.” ...

Read the rest at either of the links above. Gotta make sure any rogue news reporters conform to the News Collective's "standards", er, propaganda mission. It's not the "Ground Zero Mosque", it's merely the "NYC Mosque". Helpfully, the Propaganda Corps guidance also includes a summary of Dear Leader Obama's position on the mosque.

One wonders why we need reporters distributed in the field at all -- the Propaganda Corps / Ministry of Truth Headquarters could simply write the story for them. That way there's no chance that any wayward dissenting opinions might sneak in and muck up the official party line.

No, there will be no double dip. It will be a lot worse. The world economy will soon go into an accelerated and precipitous decline which will make the 2007 to early 2009 downturn seem like a walk in the park. The world financial system has temporarily been on life support by trillions of printed dollars that governments call money. But the effect of this massive money printing is ephemeral since it is not possible to save a world economy built on worthless paper by creating more of the same. Nevertheless, governments will continue to print since this is the only remedy they know. Therefore, we are soon likely to enter a phase of money printing of a magnitude that the world has never experienced. But this will not save the Western World which is likely to go in to a decline lasting at least 20 years but most probably a lot longer.

The End of an Era

The hyperinflationary depression that many western countries, including the US and the UK, will experience is likely to mark the end of an era that has lasted over 200 years since the industrial revolution. A major part of the growth in the last 100 years and especially in the last 40 years has been built on an unsustainable build-up of debt levels. These debt levels will continue to swell for another few years until the coming hyperinflation in the West leads to a destruction of real asset values and a debt implosion. ...

... Once upon a time, the American people worked feverishly to construct beautiful, shining communities from coast to coast. But now we get to watch those communities literally crumble and decay in slow motion. Nothing lasts forever, but for those of us who truly love America it is an incredibly sad thing to witness what is now happening to the great nation that our forefathers built.

The following are 18 signs that America is rotting right in front of our eyes....

1 - Due to extreme budget cuts, school systems across the United States are requiring their students to bring more supplies with them than ever this year. In Moody, Alabama elementary school students are being told to bring paper towels, garbage bags and liquid soap with them to school. At Pauoa Elementary School in Honolulu, Hawaii all students are being required to show up with a four-pack of toilet paper.

2 - According to the American Association of School Administrators, 48 percent of all U.S. school districts are reporting budget cuts of 10 percent or less for the upcoming school year, and 30 percent of all U.S. school districts are reporting cuts of 11 to 25 percent.

3 - In Chicago, drastic budget cuts could result in an average class size of 37 students.

4 - The governor of Hawaii has completely shut down that state's schools on Fridays - moving teachers and students to a four day week.

5 - According to the Federal Highway Administration, approximately a third of America's major roadways are already in substandard condition. ...

Unemployment is still high, growth low, deficits huge. States are cutting out everything from streetlights to paving. Public pensions are exploding everywhere.

A class war looms between retirees who want their sweet-heart obligations honored, and strapped, poorer taxpayers who feel about those bloated payouts as they do their underwater mortgages.

What Did You Expect?

In a progressive culture, where ads blare hourly about skipping out on credit card debt, shorting the IRS, and walking away from mortgages, did the public employee unions really think they were exempt from a Chrysler-like renegotiation?

In the age of Obama, there is no real contractual obligation: everything from paying back bondholders to fixing a BP penalty is, well, “negotiable.” When the money runs out, the law will too. Law? There is no law other than a mandated equality of result.

The Talkative Crowd

On the Internet recently appeared the pictures of the JournoList bunch, who at least between themselves gave up their usual pretense that the media was unbiased. With all due respect (confession: I was briefly mentioned by the list as someone that the racist card might work on in connection with the illegal immigration debate), they appear to the eye as a sort of nerdish group.

They remind me of what we used to call the “wimp table” at a pretty tough Selma High around 1970. It was there that the high school’s handful of geeks, toadies, and picked-upon used to eat, under the protective eye of yard-duty teachers. The assumption was that with a few steps further onto the grounds, the entire sorry bunch was fair game for every bully on campus. And that sad outfit filters, disseminates, and arbitrates our news? Most from their writing and appearance seemed either neurotic overachievers or twenty-something bloggers who confuse calling someone something with erudition. ...

Author Ayn Rand has millions of fans around the globe, but only one of them used the globe itself to say so.

(World's Biggest Message Says 'Read Ayn Rand'

Man Writes "Read Ayn Rand" by Driving More Than 12,000 Miles With GPS Logger

(Google Earth). Credit: ABC News)

Nick Newcomen drove 12,328 miles across the United States to "write" a message that can only be seen on Google Earth.

The mega-message "Read Ayn Rand" now stretches from coast to coast, with parts of the letters in 30 states.

According to the website World's Biggest Message, which documents Newcomen's high-tech journey, he used a Qstarz BT-Q1000X GPS tracking device as a "pen" to write his message as he drove. When he wanted to create the lines that would form letters, he turned the device on. In between letters, he turned it off. ...

Prior to 1913, there was no federal income tax. The states had rights and representation in Washington, D.C., there was no Federal Reserve Bank, and the federal government lived under the enumerated powers afforded within the U.S. Constitution. What a difference one year can make...

Almost a hundred years later, it's clear that the policies established in 1913 must be revoked in order to restore power to the people and the states. But can the American people stuff the genie back in to the bottle? ...

Read the rest of this sordid tale of woe here. The disaster that is our nation was almost 100 years in the making. Fixing it, assuming it can be fixed, will require concentrated effort and much pain and suffering -- penance for profligacy, and punishment for the irresponsibility of past generations, and our own.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Today's another-reason-to-not-trust-the-government. The FedGov said, "Hey, what are you worried about? Those virtual-strip-search machines can't store or record images of the scanned persons." Not true, it turns out:

For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they're viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that "scanned images cannot be stored or recorded."

Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.

This follows an earlier disclosure (PDF) by the TSA that it requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for "testing, training, and evaluation purposes." The agency says, however, that those capabilities are not normally activated when the devices are installed at airports.

Body scanners penetrate clothing to provide a highly detailed image so accurate that critics have likened it to a virtual strip search. Technologies vary, with millimeter wave systems capturing fuzzier images, and backscatter X-ray machines able to show precise anatomical detail. The U.S. government likes the idea because body scanners can detect concealed weapons better than traditional magnetometers. ...

Read the rest here. It's probably only a matter of time before body scans of the traveling public turn up on the Internet. Give up your privacy, mere subjects. After all, it's "for your own good."

I have *never* read an official government document that is this bitter and contemptuous of the Federal level – I never thought I would! This is damn close to a new Declaration of Independance.

I’ll reprint a few excerpts, because William Travis himself would be proud of these words:

“In order to deter challenges to your plan for centralized control of industrial development through the issuance of permits for greenhouse gases, you have called upon each state to declare its allegiance to the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently enacted greenhouse gas regulations — regulations that are plainly contrary to United States law.”

“On behalf of the state of Texas, we write to inform you that Texas has neither the authority nor the intention of interpreting, ignoring, or amending its laws in order to compel the permitting of greenhouse gas emissions.

Basically, Texas asserts that the EPA is trying to do an end run around federal law and its own regulations to regulate greenhouse gases, and is trying to bully the states into accepting the EPA's position. Let's hope other states also tell the FedGov to shove it.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

The vuvuzela (pronunciation: /vuːvuːˈzɛlə/), also known as lepatata (its Tswana name), is typically a 65-centimetre (2 ft) plastic device that requires the flow of air to produce a loud monotone note, typically around B♭3[1] (the B♭ below middle C).[2] A similar device, known as the corneta, is used in Brazil and other Latin American countries. Many types of vuvuzela, made by several manufacturers, may produce varying intensity and frequency outputs.[3] The intensity of these outputs depends on the blowing technique and pressure exerted.[3]

Traditionally made and inspired from a kudu horn, the vuvuzela was used to summon distant villagers to attend community gatherings.[4][dubious – discuss] The vuvuzela is most used at soccer matches in South Africa,[5] and it has become a symbol of South African soccer as the stadiums are filled with its loud and raucous sound that reflects the exhilaration of supporters.[4] The intensity of the sound caught the attention of the global soccer community during the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup in anticipation of South Africa hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup.[4] ...

And now, on to the, er, music. I actually found this hysterical -- you might too. Lovers of actual music, probably not so much. :)

Today's lesson in the Constitution, as practiced by the Washington ruling class. California Democrat Pete Stark voices his view (no doubt shared by many of his Capitol Hill colleagues) of the enumerated powers of the FedGov, as specified in the Constitution:

Sunday, August 1, 2010

A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid whose flow properties are not described by a single constant value of viscosity. Many polymer solutions and molten polymers are non-Newtonian fluids, as are many commonly found substances such as ketchup, starch suspensions, paint, blood and shampoo. In a Newtonian fluid, the relation between the shear stress and the strain rate is linear (and if one were to plot this relationship, it would pass through the origin), the constant of proportionality being the coefficient of viscosity. In a non-Newtonian fluid, the relation between the shear stress and the strain rate is nonlinear, and can even be time-dependent. Therefore a constant coefficient of viscosity cannot be defined.
...
An inexpensive, non-toxic example of a non-Newtonian fluid is a suspension of starch (e.g. cornflour) in water, sometimes called "oobleck" or "ooze" (2 parts corn starch to 1 part water). ...